SOURCE: Sipper, Ralph B. “How High the Sun and Other Tracking Clues.” Los Angeles Times Book Review (25 July 1982): 6.

In the following review, Sipper lauds Hillerman's prose in The Dark Wind, calling the novel “a compact story that engages.”

Until someone I trust praised Tony Hillerman's fiction, I had not read any of his mystery novels featuring a Navajo policeman. The detective as gimmick—be he blind, wheelchair-bound or homosexual—usually portends a one-note performance with everything hinged to the differentness of the gimmick being exploited. Such superficial invention usually means the reader is in for a long night.

Not so with The Dark Wind, a convincing argument for examining each case on its own merits, for not filling in the quick pigeonhole. Hillerman's book works on the levels a good mystery should. It is a compact story that engages, an implicit commentary on the Indian society it portrays...